Tag: Opera
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Earlier this year, I experienced Des Moines Metro Opera for the first time. It is a smaller company, born in the same era and with a similar mission to Chicago Opera Theater and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and one that occupies a particularly brave space in Iowa and the larger Midwest cultural landscape. Last…
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Small, storefront opera companies survive on agility, nerve and an unwavering commitment to their art form. They don’t pursue opera on a grand scale, which gives them a unique freedom. In Chicago, where “Off-Loop” theater has long flourished, Chicago City Opera recently demonstrated this spirit with a nimble, inventive double bill at the Fulton Street…
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An immense censer hung motionless over the stage, illuminated by four standing candelabras and suspended above the pit orchestra. The scale of it was unsettling. For a long moment, those were the only visible objects. Then, one by one, members of the chorus filed stately into the Pote Theatre, their measured procession lending the scene…
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I am headed to Indianola this week for Des Moines Metro Opera’s production of Szymanowski’s King Roger, a piece I recently previewed for Seen and Heard alongside the rest of the company’s festival season. There is a small irony in this trip. I spent seven years in central Iowa, four at Iowa State and three…
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Central Iowa in July is not a place most people associate with opera. The corn and soybean fields south of Des Moines run flat and full beneath a wide sky, the heat presses down, and the towns along Highway 69 move at the pace of a long summer. Indianola has a grain elevator, a small…
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When I moved to Seattle in the summer of 2004, I had never seen a live opera. It wasn’t for lack of interest; classical music had taken hold of me during my student years in Iowa, and opera was part of that passion from early on. The first I ever heard was Salome, followed by…
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It’s a strange thing to survive a mass shooting and, years later, feel grateful for the knowledge it leaves behind. Grateful for understanding what comes after, and how that single event reshapes every life it touches. Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence is built entirely from that “after.” I’ve just returned from seeing it in New York, and…
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Opera in the 21st century is caught between two impulses: the push to say something new, and the pull to rely on what already works. New operas get commissioned and staged. Old standbys get revived, reimagined, and sometimes over-explained. Neither approach is wrong, but both carry risk. This spring, two productions running concurrently at Lyric…
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On Valentine’s Day weekend, Chicago City Opera brought Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon (Cinderella) to the CheckOut in Lakeview, proving that you don’t need a proscenium arch to create magic. The CheckOut is a former 7-Eleven on North Clark Street, now revived by Access Contemporary Music and composer Seth Boustead as a venue for chamber music and…
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After finally seeing Lyric Opera’s current Salome, I’m convinced more than ever that this isn’t just a fine opera, it’s riveting theater. For this run, Lyric is using David McVicar’s darkly disturbing 2008 production for the Royal Opera House, and it works. The upstairs/downstairs staging pits Herod’s decadent elite against quarreling religious factions in a…